I don't see how this is a problem. All deployable vehicles (including planes) are intentionally designed to have an advantage against infantry. Even the vehicle variants with crappy anti-infantry weapons have an advantage over the average Assault. They each have a degree of specialization that makes them better at certain roles and worse at others. The Flanker LT happens to be the best in its class at mowing down squishies, in exchange for crap anti-tank performance.

I don't see the reduced anti-vehicle capability as really making up for how powerful it is against infantry. As you say, it is the most powerful when it comes to deleting infy on the battlefield.

Any Landship with an intelligent, coordinated crew counters any Heavy tank crew of equal skill. Even a Howitzer tank puts up a good fight against it, and Artillery Trucks can just stand back and snipe the tank.

I would like to add that I did imply this in my main post. The Heavy is the best causal-use armor because it can be operated solo with two or three blueberry gunners and do just fine for itself. The Landship is clearly superior vs. armor with a coordinated squad on comms. I was even going to say that specifically in the main post before I revised it :d

The Flanker tank will be just as vulnerable as any other vehicle if he is not paying attention to his position. Teams that are paying attention to major threats will immediately focus a Flanker with explosives, and a Flanker is most likely going to die if it does not have an escape route.

Unfortunately there isn't a way to play in a super competitive environment outside of getting onto clan servers so my typical experience is that these things just run over blueberries with no real resistance. Teamplay is obviously the counter to any of these vehicles but there are specific situations in which the Flanker can mitigate bad positioning. Obviously driving into the center of infy isn't really recoverable but sticking to the outskirts of maps like Amiens and poking out occasionally is far less counterable. One might argue that this is exactly the strength the vehicle should be played to but as 99% of the playerbase are casual blueberry shitters, they don't take the steps to prevent this.

Maybe my real problem is blueberries. After all, if they didn't constantly hide in spawn with the Arty truck, I'd be killing Flankers with my own armor.

This post has been edited 2 times, last edit by "BeefVellington" (Feb 23rd 2017, 2:23am)

I'm not committing to a specific opinion on the Light Tank itself, but as a general concept it does make sense that a Tank good against infantry but bad against Tanks would be far more powerful/useful than a Tank with the opposite specialties. What I mean by this is, Tanks aren't really for fighting other Tanks, nor do they spend a ton of time doing so. Tanks kill infantry, and fight a single engagement with an enemy Tank if one happens to show up, then they go back to killing infantry.

The relevance of tank killing goes up with the population of armor in a given match. BF1 has pathethic armor populations AND very slow respawns at 64 players and so tank engagements are very rare.

I spent far, far, far more time fighting tanks/IFVs in BF4 simply because there was a constant supply of them.

At least one of the new maps promises lots of enemy armor. If it's 4v4, or 6v6 armor slots the AT tanks will be much more balanced choices.

YES! And they're pretty effective even at 300m - you can harass snipers with it.
And actually this is the main issue with Flanker. But if remove canister from it and give it a flamethrower - it will severely decrease his godlikeness against infantry.

Sorry for my bad english - it's not my native language and I have difficulties with acquiring speaking/writing practice in my country. If I accidently insult you or say something wrong - I'm sorry, you can feel free to correct me.

I generally enjoy seeing flankers on the field. They are easy kills. all of the light tanks except the howitzer are objectively just bad. And the howitzer is only useful on certain maps with specific playstyles.

The flanker has a single autocannon. The SS landship has an autocannon plus two heavy guns. The A7V gets a derpgun and an assload of survivability, or autocannon(s).

The flanker is straight up the least survivable tank in the current game as well. It has to run away and hide if more than 1 guy shoots at any given time. So basically always unless its oppents are straight up bad. You can't fix bad with rebalancing.

A7V assault is pretty unambigiously the best solo infantry farmer, and the SS landship is the best overall infantry farmer.

The relevance of tank killing goes up with the population of armor in a given match. BF1 has pathethic armor populations AND very slow respawns at 64 players and so tank engagements are very rare.

I spent far, far, far more time fighting tanks/IFVs in BF4 simply because there was a constant supply of them.

At least one of the new maps promises lots of enemy armor. If it's 4v4, or 6v6 armor slots the AT tanks will be much more balanced choices.

This is the exact line of thought I was getting at. Even the biggest BF1 maps still have a pretty damn low vehicle count. I miss setups like Golmud with, what was it, like four MBTs, an MAA, (potentially) an IFV, one of each jet type, attack heli, transport heli, and (potentially) a scout per team. And then jeeps and such on top of that.

One Flanker can absolutely wreck a team when it's 50% of your team's tanks and 25% of all tanks on the map. One Flanker with something like seven other tanks on the map is suddenly far less of a problem.

As for Flanker balance, it definitely needs an ammo pool system like the others instead of infinite spare, and the canister rounds are questionable, but it's probably good otherwise.

The relevance of tank killing goes up with the population of armor in a given match. BF1 has pathethic armor populations AND very slow respawns at 64 players and so tank engagements are very rare.

I spent far, far, far more time fighting tanks/IFVs in BF4 simply because there was a constant supply of them.

At least one of the new maps promises lots of enemy armor. If it's 4v4, or 6v6 armor slots the AT tanks will be much more balanced choices.

This is the exact line of thought I was getting at. Even the biggest BF1 maps still have a pretty damn low vehicle count. I miss setups like Golmud with, what was it, like four MBTs, an MAA, (potentially) an IFV, one of each jet type, attack heli, transport heli, and (potentially) a scout per team. And then jeeps and such on top of that.

One Flanker can absolutely wreck a team when it's 50% of your team's tanks and 25% of all tanks on the map. One Flanker with something like seven other tanks on the map is suddenly far less of a problem.

As for Flanker balance, it definitely needs an ammo pool system like the others instead of infinite spare, and the canister rounds are questionable, but it's probably good otherwise.

Also, why the hell does the Tank Hunter have gas instead of smoke?

You still need to be able to kill enemy tanks to stay relevant most of the round, even with the vehicle pop as low as it is. You are 100% going to run into armor you can't run away from on basically all of the maps. The flanker has to withdraw against enemy armor, which means it is nuffied by the mere presence of an enemy tank.

Cannister really isn't that much of a problem given that is on a crappy vehicle package.

The gas discharger is basically useless and should be removed from the game IMO, or turned into a giant trailing cloud of doom or something like the smokscreen.

As for why the TH doesn't have smoke. It's already stupidly OP at it's role of killing vehicle-things. With smoke +e rep it could disengage from any infantry rocket engagement as well.

I don't see the reduced anti-vehicle capability as really making up for how powerful it is against infantry. As you say, it is the most powerful when it comes to deleting infy on the battlefield.

In an engagement between players of equal skill, the Flanker tank will lose against almost any other land-based deployable in the game, except the Anti-Air/Mortar Artillery truck. Choosing a Flanker tank is a strategic decision that gambles on being able to completely wreck infantry at the risk of losing/being forced to run away from every armor fight. Every other vehicle variant in BF1 is basically a gamble on specializations and weaknesses. Pick a Tank Hunter Landship, and you get almost unrivaled AT capabilities in exchange for reduced anti-infantry expertise in the form of a slow-firing Tankgewher and less gunners. Pick a Heavy Flamethrower tank, and you give up the ranged MG's/support crates on Assault tank and the splash-creating 20mm cannons on Breakthrough tank, which can be somewhat helpful against armor.

I would like to add that I did imply this in my main post. The Heavy is the best causal-use armor because it can be operated solo with two or three blueberry gunners and do just fine for itself. The Landship is clearly superior vs. armor with a coordinated squad on comms. I was even going to say that specifically in the main post before I revised it :d

Reminds me of the time a Tank Hunter Landship crew I had that destroyed 4 Heavy Tanks and an opposing Landship consecutively of Flag A on Empire's Edge. Good times.

Unfortunately there isn't a way to play in a super competitive environment outside of getting onto clan servers so my typical experience is that these things just run over blueberries with no real resistance. Teamplay is obviously the counter to any of these vehicles but there are specific situations in which the Flanker can mitigate bad positioning. Obviously driving into the center of infy isn't really recoverable but sticking to the outskirts of maps like Amiens and poking out occasionally is far less counterable. One might argue that this is exactly the strength the vehicle should be played to but as 99% of the playerbase are casual blueberry shitters, they don't take the steps to prevent this.

Maybe my real problem is blueberries. After all, if they didn't constantly hide in spawn with the Arty truck, I'd be killing Flankers with my own armor.

Well, yeah. Staying on the borders of the map is good positioning and limits enemies to approach you one at a time. It always sucks when your teammates are mediocre and don't know how to fight tanks. You might as well just take the initiative and deploy in armor yourself the first chance you get.

I can get behind the notion that the Flanker needs a longer downtime in-between shots, though. One can continually let loose a spray of 20mm explosives while driving one, which is frustrating to play against when the enemy tank won't stop firing.

I am primarily an infantry player who dabbles in tanks and planes if or when available, if or when being the operative words here. As such, my input will generally revolve around opposing tanks because whenever I play, Blueberry infantry just flat out suck against even the most mediocre of tankers.

As of late I've been working on the Model 8 Marksman and, very obviously, tanks are a Medic's worst fear. I switch between Conquest and Operations depending on how the session is going, and in the times I have played Operations I have encountered quite a few FT Flankers especially when defending. On Operations these things are a fricken menace. Being the very linear game mode that Operations is, FT Flanker tankers (haha...Flanker tankers) don't even have to consider watching their backs because the entire enemy team is laid out on a shiny, silver platter right in front of them.

In fact a Flanker tanker doesn't even have to be aggressive to be effective. The 20mm auto-cannon reloads in 2.5s, does 22 damage, and has a blast radius of 2.5m, guess what the inner blast radius is? 2.49m! What?! Flankers can just casually spew beams of death; accuracy isn't even necessary. This permits a very passive playstyle that is more personally rewarding than being aggressive because he isn't directly in the action.

He will die almost never because long range AT weaponry is limited to Field Guns (if you can find one), Rocket Guns (if it doesn't ricochet or Blueberry Assaults actually engage tanks rather than snipe infantry with them), and opposing tanks (if the operators actually have the mind to withdraw from only farming infantry). When critically damaged it can just repair tracks if need be, retreat nice and quick-like, initiate repairs, and return to action in less than 30s. In that downtime, Assaults cannot even close the gap because he's put about 15 of his friends between you and him ensuring his near-invulnerability.

You all know how dense and concentrated infantry are on Operations, if this thing can find the high ground watch out because it mimics BF3's USAS Frag Rounds. There is no escape if you're targeted, unless the tanker happens to run out of ammo just before you greet the death screen. I imagine it would dominate on Rush and Frontlines as well because infantry-heavy linearity is this tank's best friend.

That said, Conquest is a different story. This mode is dominated by the Heavy tank, Landship, and Artillery Truck. Because of this Flankers are almost non-existent, because maps that feature tanks have multiple tanks, so specializing in AT is practically a necessity. Flankers cannot defend themselves against these highly prevalent options. Since Conquest maps are traditionally wide open, the Flanker is infinitely more exposed; he can't hide behind a wall of infantry while knowing no one can possibly maneuver behind him, unlike Operations. A couple of stealthy Assaults can absolutely ruin his day in the right situation.

Prepare your laughbox

the Sebstalder is quiet good since it can 3hit kill at any distanc ,but In my opinion i actually thikn the sweeper is better, its got a really really fast firerate that can beat alll those Noobmaticos, Helregall adn shitguns in close quarters , and its also really accurate out to like l;ong range,. overall great allround gun, jsut my 2$ tho